Note that this code is called frequently before some specific functions actually get through here without a hitch. It's after a specific previous function that I found with a binary search that when commented out, the issue goes away.

My question is, would you agree that this is likely a heap error? I tried to detect it with windbg with no luck. I looked at the code in the function that when commented out, the problem goes away, but I don't see the problem yet. Is it highly likely that this is where the problem is?

And my most important question of all--> If we skate around this issue and change the code in ways where we don't really fix it, but the error remains hidden, if it doesn't happen on my machine any more in debug or release mode, and the input to the function remains constant on customer machines, is it possible that other factors can expose this problem differenly on other machines? (This is the "solution" that is being pushed on me and I'm thinking it's a very very bad idea)...

It looks more like using an object that has already been deleted, which you also could call 'memory corruption' or 'heap error'. I'd try to add logging code to the destructors that dumps the 'this' pointers and then see if you can pinpoint the usage of one of these instances with the above code.

a heap error would occur if malloc returns a NULL pointer, or free would not find the pointer passed as argument what both is not the case here.

here the pointer pSrc was invalid and was not pointing to a valid _variant_t, perhaps it was NULL or was not initialized. unfortunately the 'IsBadReadPtr' function cannot used to decide whether a non-null pointer was corrupt as it is an obsolete function which doesn't work correctly (see the link jkr provided above).

alternatively to using the SEH try-catch as described by jkr, you also could catch the exception by a c++ try-catch when you choose the option 'Yes, with SEH exceptions' at configuration properties - c/c++ - code generation - enable c++ exceptions for your active project configuration.